It’s been a little while since Orientation, but my mind keeps on drifting back to that time. It was… incredible to say the least. I mean, I can easily say being a Perspectives Leader was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

For those of you that don’t know, the University of Puget Sound has an intense 9/10 day (depending on who you ask) orientation program. Yeah. We’re crazy. Whatever. Three of those days are dedicated to Passages, which is a camping trip in the Olympic National Park. Another three days is for Perspectives, which is for learning more about Tacoma and how to get around/involved. The rest of the days are for various other orientation activities. Every year, the university hires upperclassmen to come back to campus early and lead Passages or Perspectives and pays them the princely sum of $100. Don’t worry, the experience was totally worth only being paid $100.

I arrived on campus on August 13th (exactly 3 months after I left campus for the summer in May!) and spent the day moving into my room. That night, I was so excited for training beginning the next day I could barely sleep! I didn’t know what to expect and couldn’t wait to meet the other leaders.

The next few days were long and damn hard. We spent anywhere between 10 and 14 hours together, training, learning and discussing. I always went to sleep completely drained. Sometimes, I dozed off during presentations because I was just so burned out. But I would do everything again in a heartbeat.

In those few days, I bonded so much with all of the other leaders. We laughed together, cheered together, chanted together and even cried together. We all got to learn so much about one another through more activities or discussions than I can count. They became more than just friends. They became family.

Ashley and Ben were impressed with my Nalgene balancing skills

And then came move-in day. Training was over. Time to face the first-years. My day started at 6:30AM and I didn’t go to sleep until almost 1AM. It was a reeeeeeeeeeally long day. But it was so much fun!

The best part of the day was Convocation. All of the new students and parents were gathered in Baker Stadium to listen to speeches from the Dean of Students Mike Segawa, New University President Isiaah Crawford and other speakers. I’m gonna be honest, as great as those speeches were, they weren’t the best part.

The best part of the best part of the day was being in the section of the bleachers with all of the other campus student leaders. Perspectives, Passages, ResLife, CICE, we were all there. We were all screaming our heads off, coming up with chants, doing weird things and generally acting crazy. We were having the time of our lives.

Lots of orange -ahem- salmon

My voice was so sore by the end of the day. But it was totally worth it. Then I realized that I was freaking exhausted and Orientation hadn’t even technically started yet.

Also, sometime around 9/10PM-ish, I yelled “ALL MY LIFE I WANNA BE LOGGER” at the first-years in Anderson/Langdon Hall. No one replied. It was a sad time. Moving on.

Orientation was crazy. Almost every day, there was something going on. Meetings, skit rehearsals (more on that later), groups to talk to, volunteer activities, debriefs, updates, registrations and tons of other things to do. But like training, it was so much fun.

One of my groups, with my co-lead Ashley

Ryan needs to get better at selfies…

One of my favorite parts of Orientation was the Campus Life Skit. The CLS is a series of skits, songs and dance numbers to help inform new students about all aspects of campus life, from university services to partying safely. All the Perspectives leaders had parts to play. I had roles in multiple skits, which were: Tour Guide, Drunk Partygoer (in two different skits) and Drunk Naked Boy. I think I see a common theme among some of these roles. Whatever. And as I keep saying with just about everything, IT WAS SO MUCH FUN.

Yes, I am in an orange morphsuit

After our second showing of the CLS (we had two showings for the two different orientation sessions), we had one of our final activities. We did a name board activity. Basically, we all took turns writing notes on each other’s boards, which ranged from little messages to short essays. These boards would become our keepsakes of Perspectives. A physical memory of our time as leaders. Together.

That night, I read all the messages that everyone wrote on my board. Because my roommate was asleep, I had to use the light peeking between my window blinds to read. As I read, I was filled with just so much happiness. The messages were so sweet, being filled with praise and just good old love. Then I was filled with a ton of regret. Everyone had written such amazing messages on my board while I had written what I considered as comparatively superficial messages on theirs. So I spent all night laying in bed, thinking about how terrible a person I am. Okay maybe I’m over dramatizing things. It was more like two hours.

And then the next day was the final day of orientation. The first event planned for the day was Matriculation, a ceremony that signaled the official beginning of college for the new students. Given that this was a semi-formal event, all the leaders were dressed up, so while the speeches were happening, we were taking awesome pictures. My favorite was of when we were lined up on the side of Commencement Walk with Mike Segawa talking to the first years in the background.

Best Picture ever

After Matriculation, we had our final debrief. The very last one. The one that, when finished, would signal the end of the our time as Perspectives Leaders for the year.

It was an activity. Our last activity. We all sat in a circle with one person holding a ball of yarn. That person pointed out another person and threw the yarn to them. Then they just talked about them. Complimented them, praised them, talked about a funny memory. Anything. Then that person would pass it to another and another and so forth. Sometimes, the yarn would travel across the circle, other times, just a few people away. We were crying, but we didn’t care, we had cried in front of each other before. This continued until the yarn reached every single person in the circle. The end result was a network of yarn. It showed that each and every one of us was connected. We were more than just a group of leaders, more than a team, we were a family.

Once the activity was over, there was a hesitation. No one stood up. Standing up meant that we accepted that it was over. And many of us just weren’t ready to accept that fact. After a minute, someone stood up and it was over.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, being a Perspectives Leader was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was life changing. After reading this post, I hope that you can see why.

If you have the chance, apply to be an Orientation Leader! I promise you, you’ll have the time of your life.

This is for all of the Perspectives Leaders reading this right now: Ya’ll were LIT. I love you guys.

Outside a fenced off building that appeared to be the former location of a soviet physics and science university.

A lot has gone on since I wrote last, which I’m sure you expected. I’ll start with my classes. My Russian language classes have been going really well. I almost have the alphabet memorized. I believe I wrote about this briefly in my last post, but I’ll get into a little more detail just in case anyone is interested 😛

I live 20 minutes from this place.

With Russian you write in a unique form of cursive. Each print letter like you would see in any publication or on a storefront sign has a corresponding uppercase and lowercase cursive letter. Each letter has a particular pronunciation with a hard sign and soft sign that separate consonants. More to come on my language classes…according to my “prepadavacia “ (professor) Inga, it takes students on average about a month to be able to read and write in Russian (which doesn’t seem like that long if you think about it).

St. Petersburg, Russia City Center Canal tour.

I also had my first 17^th Century Russian Literature class this past Thursday. Right off the bat the “prepadavatelitsa “ asked if she could teach the class in Russian and write in Russian cursive on the white board. Luckily the class all agreed to have her speak in English, but I had to ask her to write in English since I can’t quite read Russian cursive that quickly. This wasn’t embarrassing to me, but rather I just hope she doesn’t resent having to write in English. I’m really excited about the different texts we’re going to be reading in the class: Diary of a Madman, Anna Karenina, Eugene Onegin, Crime & Punishment, and a couple other titles that are slipping my memory at the moment (I’m sitting in the laundry room doing an early morning load as I write this). If our first class discussion is going to be the standard, then I don’t mind reading a few thousands pages this semester and conducting literary analysis on them (I really liked this class if you can’t already tell).

Peter and Paul Fortress

I received information about my homestay family from my program advisor earlier this week. I move into my homestay the 24^th of September! I got a babushka that lives a 15-minute walk away from the Politekhnicheskaya metro station. This is on the red line one stop from Akademicheskaya where my college is. She has hosted homestays for a few years now and usually takes students who are brand new to speaking Russian. Apparently she is a great cook, so needless to say I am really excited. I’m really looking forward to improving my Russian conversational ability (apparently homestays are one of the best ways to do this because of the constant interaction using the language). It is interesting the way rent & utilities are paid for during my homestay. I pay 600 rubles per day (about 10 USD), a onetime 1200 ruble fee for Wi-Fi for the semester (about 20 USD). Just take a mental note of how inexpensive the cost of living is in Russia in comparison to America. I have dinner with my homestay babushka this coming Wednesday, so more to come on that.

Neva River Canal tour

Note the title of this blog post, it means “Are you able to speak English?” When I went to order my food at Peterburgers, I threw out my usual tell-all phrase “Ya ni gavaru pa-ruski harasho,” (I don’t speak Russian well). The guy taking my order looked a bit annoyed or maybe even offended and said in clear English, “Well I speak English so that’s fine.” Of course when I tell Russians I can’t speak Russian that well, it’s not because I’m assuming they’re uneducated and unable to speak English. In terms of becoming aware of cultural differences, this interaction really helped me to realize how language barriers can present unintentional consequences. My interactions over the last couple of weeks have shown me just how important it is to learn another culture’s language if you want to interact with them decently.

Neva River canal tour shot

I still think it’s a little insane that I live about 20 minutes from that place. Anyway, this wasn’t as simple as planning a date in America, mind you, remembering that “Ya ni gavaru pa-ruski harasho.” That morning I went to pick up some flowers for her. In Russia you have to pick up an odd number of flowers because an even number indicates someone has died. None of the babushkas that sell flowers on the street corners here had flowers that looked any good, so I went into a flower shop next door to the metro station. The lady at the flower shop didn’t speak English so I spent about 20 minutes pointing, umming and ahhing, and quickly typing into a translator on my phone to try to speed the process along. This type of thing happens semi-often, but that just provides all that much more motivation to keep on hitting the books in my language class. All the signs in the metro are in Russian, with phonetic English names of the stops included on the maps. That week I charted out what route we would take to get to the restaurant, and scoped it out once when I was out getting a haircut in the city center with one of my suitemates.

That’s a lot of gold!

Speaking of my suite mates, the Slav Bros, one of them had to leave the program during the second week due to bereavement. He is a solid dude and I wish him all the best. People throughout the dorms have also been sick this past week (knock on wood, my immune system has just always been pretty good). Getting sick seems to be much more of a hassle in Russia, and I attribute this mostly to generally lower standards of hygiene and medical care in the country in comparison to America. Hey, Russia is apart of the BRICS “emerging” economies, so I’m sure this will improve over time.

Aesthetic

I’ve also had the opportunity to meet some other foreign students studying at Peter the Great, from places such as Bogota, Colombia, South Korea, and Iran. It’s been interesting to have conversations with them, examining how native English compares to textbook English. I also got to talk to Jose from Columbia in Spanish, which was pretty cool (apparently my Spanish isn’t all that bad).

The Amsterdam of the East

The Amsterdam of the East pt. 2

This past Friday the other Americans and I took a boat tour around the canals in the St. Petersburg city center. This was something I had wanted to do for along time. I got a lot of great photos. There was this Russian kid who kept running along the canals and waving at our boat as it went under bridges. He had most of us laughing by the end of the tour. Anyway, this has been a fairly long post in comparison to my other ones. I’m about to hit the gym and start reading my next book for my lit class. Thank you to those who have emailed me with suggestions and questions thus far, I’m glad I could give you some additional info! As always anyone else with questions feel free to email me: asexton@pugetsound.edu

Pacah,

-Andrei

Well I’ve been in Russia for an entire week, and what a week it has been! I originally did not think that I would be blogging this often, but there’s so much to talk about. Where to start…

High rise apartments in southern St. Petersburg, Russia.

I guess I’ll start with my classes. Now that I have a more solid class schedule, I’m taking: Russian Language, Contemporary Russian Society, Russian Literature, and The History of Russia from Kiev to the Rus. My language teacher Inga (not Ingra, pazhalusta Inga) has been making sure we don’t get too overwhelmed. Not surprisingly Russian is a difficult language to learn. There are 33 letters in the alphabet, and you write in one form of cursive, read in print form (as well as your own cursive), and then there is speaking of course. Don’t get me wrong, Inga is giving us a lot of work considering that the majority of us in our class are complete novices, but she’s not making it difficult to learn. M/W/F we have language class from 10:00-13:30 (they use military time in Russia). T/Th are electives days, with six hours split between whichever electives we chose. I can honestly say I am excited about all of my classes; true self-motivated learning here since UPS doesn’t offer any Russian language classes.

Some amazing architecture commonly seen throughout the city of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Now to exploring Sanct Peterborg (that’s how the local’s pronounce it).I have been out exploring the city everyday since we arrived. We’ve gotten lost every single day, but that’s fine with me. We’ve gotten off on the wrong stop on the metro & taken wrong turns in the Nevsky Prospekt, but we’re better for it. I’d say we’ve probably walked a good 15 miles every day getting to know the city. It can be a bit overwhelming living and studying in a completely new country where you don’t know the language.

The group of American students I’m studying abroad with, as I mentioned in my last post, are all a bunch of really smart and interesting people. We all meld really well and have the same mindset; we care about school and obviously didn’t choose to study abroad in Russia to go on a vacation.

Some of the American students, #florence2k16.

The food portions are about half the size of American servings, so whenever I go to order something I always end with “Bolshoi” (indicating a large size of that item). They never indulge my request, except for the Blini place down the street where I got a ton of strawberry jam and a bigger sized coffee the other morning (I think the ladies appreciated I was trying to order in Russian). Russians tend to drink tea instead of coffee, so finding a nice large cup of medium roast black coffee to start my day has been a big struggle.

A typical lunch of Georgian cuisine I eat here for less than 200 Rubles, or the equivalent of 2 USD, which is so much food that it’s my dinner as well.

As a part of studying abroad the American students and myself go on excursions and see different major landmarks throughout the city. We went to the Hermitage, which was crazy aesthetic. Just to give you an idea, apparently you would have to spend nine years to see every single piece of art in the museum. Through this program I have the opportunity to volunteer there, which I’m hoping will work out. We’ve been to Peter and Paul Fortress, where we saw the Russian soldiers march, and they let off a blank mortar round as usual at 12:00. We’ve also been to the summer palace of Peter the Great, where we got to see all of the amazing gardens, fountains, and gold coated cupolas. We didn’t get to go inside the main palace, but instead went through the Dacha, where the Russian royalty used to go to Banya. Banya is a great Russian tradition where you sit in a sauna, and cleanse your body of all it’s toxins.

The summer palace in southern St. Petersburg, Russia.

I know I put a couple of common touristy photos in here, but come on this is incredible. Getting adjusted to life here in Russia has been a bit of a learning curve, but overall I think my faculty advisor was dead right, “a life changing, once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Golden cupolas that capture the glare of the sun, according to one of our professors, “a Russian representation of God’s divinity.”

That’s all for now, more soon to come.

Pacah,

-Andrey

If you spend more than a day at University of Puget Sound, you will probably hear it. No, not the clatter of baristas providing everyone with their daily caffeine source, the constant whirring of the lawn mowers that trim our fields, or the trill of instruments wafting through the air from the music building. One specific word. Home. It is peppily chirped as an alluring hook by admissions officers, thoughtfully considered in discussions held by students about campus climate, and consistently promoted in every brochure. Our administration emphasizes that above all else we acquire from Puget Sound, perhaps even more so than our outstanding liberal arts education, we get a new home, the first one most of us are truly able to actively craft for ourselves as adults. Regardless of whether any of us were looking for that home, it is almost universally accepted on our campus that any student will admit that Puget Sound has become their home in some shape or form. The word home is so widely used to describe the atmosphere on our campus that every year at Convocation the returning students would count the number of times that our former President Ronald Thomas (affectionately known as ‘Ron Thom’ by almost everyone on campus) used the word in his welcome speech.

In stark contrast to the visions of affection and inspiration that the concept of home conjures, people at Puget Sound often also refer to the campus as “The Bubble”. Needless to say, this phrase isn’t employed quite as often to advertise our university. Funnily (but not so coincidently) enough, the Bay Area (where I grew up) is often referred to as “The Bubble” as well. I attribute this to the immeasurable privilege and security offered by the institution of Puget Sound and the abundant prosperity of the Bay Area. Despite the vast array of negative connotations that this phrase carries with it, I consider both places home, as they have both placed integral roles in my personal development. I have witnessed Puget Sound students (including myself) benefit greatly from this phenomenon. My personal experiences at Puget Sound have led me to conclude that due to Puget Sound being framed to the students as not just a school but a home, our staff play a variety of roles in the lives of the students which, in the most ideal circumstances, counteracts the insulating effect of “The Bubble” on students, in an indirect manner. Professors, administrators and other staff members act as educators, mentors, and even friends. Puget Sound students, with the right nurturing and education from staff, grow into strong, brave human beings, and willingly invest their time in breaking out of “The Bubble” and leaving behind (at least temporarily) the shelter that our campus offers in favor of becoming more independent. When students chose to return to Puget Sound, the campus is a refuge, a place to feel safe as we take our first steps into adulthood.

When I arrived on campus freshman year, I immediately felt welcomed by the students and staff into what would become both my academic community and my personal home. Within two years, Puget Sound had become my home in a multitude of indescribable ways. I had grown from an excited yet timid high school graduate to a bold and adventurous college student under the tutelage and care of my professors and the Puget Sound staff. I both embraced “The Bubble” and pushed against it. Over the course of twenty four months, I became increasingly willing to venture beyond the confines of our campus community. I was incredibly curious what the world could teach me, and I felt more confident in my decision to study abroad knowing that Puget Sound and the home it offered would always be there for me.

Puget Sound taught me to find home in a place. On campus, this could be amongst the bright commotion of Diversions, the gentle peace under the redwoods groves, or in the deafening silence of the library. With this concept of home unconsciously crafting my conceptions of my future endeavors abroad, I embarked on an adventure in search of what I naively imagined would be my new home. It took me until now, approximately nine months later, to realize that those conceptions of home were feelings or experiences which were connected, but not inextricably tied, to the locations from which they originated. I could never have imagined that by providing me with a place to call home and the opportunity to leave (and later return) to that home, Puget Sound would also teach me to feel at home without a permanent address. In reality, home does not necessarily have to be a physical place. It is instead the people who support you, the memories you carry with you, and most importantly, the confidence you create within yourself.

I loved my house, the safe place that sheltered me from the hot sun and the noise of the medina, in Morocco. But it was a house, not my home. The family that hosted me, the love they had for me despite any linguistic or cultural differences between us, that was my home. I could have made myself comfortable in nearly any house, but the people in my family in Morocco were integral to feeling that I was welcome in a new country. The Center for Cross Cultural Learning was a beautiful old riad in the heart of the medina, but the true academic home I discovered in Rabat was in Tammam and Taieb, my Arabic teacher and the Academic Director of the SIT program, both wonderful human beings who were willing to go to any lengths to help me and the other students on my program adapt to life in their country.

Not every moment in Morocco was perfect (and the same can be said for my time on the Puget Sound campus). I sat through some boring and rather useless classes, had disagreements with a variety of other strong-willed students on the program, and at times struggled to adapt and make the concessions necessary to smoothly integrate into daily life in a foreign country. I occasionally felt out of place in Moroccan society and did not always like all of my American classmates enough to crave their company on a daily basis. However, I learned more than I will ever fully be able to understand about traveling and living in a foreign country, and I value all of my experiences there, good and bad. They taught me more than I ever expected and began my introduction to the reality of the world.

I have given up the illusion that any place in which I only intend to reside temporarily should feel perfect or provide me with the ideal home. I don’t need the most fascinating classes, a beautiful house, effortless communication with my host families, or a nearly blood-bonded group of guaranteed life-long friends. I have been both sheltered and challenged in a variety of locations by an eclectic host of people upon whom I came to depend and who also taught me to depend upon myself. I have derived invaluable personal growth from the imperfections which I have encountered throughout my academic career, both abroad and stateside, which have served to highlight the moments of success and joy. I cherish the experiences and memories I have gained more than any conception of a perfect home that I could ever envision. I am no longer looking for home in a place, but rather in myself.

CCCL Rabat Squad in Tarmilat, Morocco.

SIT Morocco: Multiculturalism and Human Rights Fall 2015 in Erg Chebbi, Morocco.

Me along Ruston Way during Reading Period this past spring semester before leaving to go abroad.

Hello, my name is Amanda Klein, and I am a rising senior at UPS. I am double majoring in Politics & Government (tracking in International Relations) and International Political Economy, specializing in studies of Middle Eastern Political Economics and Arabic. I will be blogging for What We Do while I am abroad in Jordan this summer.

Last fall I studied abroad through SIT (School for International Training) in Rabat, Morocco. I loved North Africa and Arabic so much that I decided I wanted to keep traveling around and studying the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region. This spring I was admitted to Qasid Institute’s Summer Intensive Arabic Program, located in Amman, Jordan. I was thrilled to have the chance to continue my Arabic studies.

In addition to living in Amman for ten weeks, I have had the chance to do quite a lot of traveling since the beginning of the summer. I plan to post a few entries on my travels prior to the beginning of the program to get everyone reading this caught up, in addition to entries on what I do and where I go while I am in Jordan.

A few random facts about myself…

1) I play the clarinet in Concert Band at UPS. I started playing clarinet in fifth grade. I am rather abhorrent and possess little natural talent for the instrument, but love playing it in an ensemble.

2) My favorite foods are hummus, chocolate, coffee, and mint lemonade. Thankfully, all four of these foods can be found in delicious abundance in the Middle East.

3) I have visited thirteen countries outside the United States. If I haven’t been there, it’s probably on my list.

Countries I have visited are highlighted in blue.